Tawnjerae Joe, B.S.

Tawnjerae Joe, B.S., joined DCEG as an iCURE predoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Translational Genomics in October 2024. Ms. Joe is a graduate student at the Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, continuing her studies in DCEG through the iCURE program. In her prior graduate research, Ms. Joe worked with The Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention to explore cancer health disparities. Her research project focused on understanding the relationship between HPV genotype infection, vaginal microbiome composition, lactobacillus bacterial abundance, and risk factors among American Indian/Native Alaskan (AIAN) and non-AIAN women and how these factors contribute to dysplasia, and eventually cervical cancer. Prior to pursuing graduate school, Ms. Joe was a Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program Scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, working in the Drug Discovery Program, where she focused on translational pharmacology work in neuro-degenerative diseases and aging. Ms. Joe earned her B.S. in biochemistry from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, in 2020.

Ms. Joe is studying the development of cervical precancer and cancer from rare high-risk HPV types using long-read whole-genome sequencing of cervical cancer tumors and bioinformatic tools to further identify viral and host genome variances. Her mentors are Michael Dean, Ph.D. and Lisa Mirabello, Ph.D., M.S., of the Clinical Genetics Branch